How to Handle Negative Feedback on Social Media

While an increased online presence opens your brand up to more leads, it also fully exposes the feedback your B2B company receives. While regular complaints are important to deal with, complaints on social media can be extremely damaging to your company image. Only 30% of customers share positive reviews on social media, yet 45% of customers share negative reviews on social media. There are ways you can turn the negative reviews into a positive experience.

Complaints and postings on social media are extremely time-sensitive. It is best to have alerts created and a dedicated personnel, to monitor your social channels for all customer feedback. 58% of customer service teams view managing social media inquiries as their top challenge. The longer a posting is out there, the more views and engagement it will have. The longer the complaints are out there without your response, the more negative the view becomes.

Not all complaints will be sent directly to your social media channels. Less than 3% of customers directly @mention brands on Twitter. Your customers are having conversations about you – monitor and search for people talking about your brand, but don’t expect all will come through your handle.

Respond immediately to show your concern and care for the customer. Failure to respond entirely leads to a 15% increase in the churn rate for existing customers. The faster you are able to connect with a customer who has left a negative response, the more likely you are to keep the customer. Quickly fix their problem and apologize.

You might consider some of these suggestions for a quick response:

Acknowledge a negative tweet as soon as possible by directly replying with a message like, “We’re sorry to hear that and hope we can remedy the issue soon.”

If there is a serious problem, say you will direct message the customer to discuss the issue further.

In the direct message, provide an email address of support personnel. Giving an actual person’s email address rather than a generic one shows someone will be taking care of the problem quickly and personally.

33% of users prefer to contact brands using social media rather than the telephone, and 67% of consumers have used a company’s social media site for servicing. Negative feedback will happen and when it does, it will be out in the open for the world to see. However, if you respond quickly and solve their problem, you can leave the customer satisfied and with a positive experience.

Hopefully, your swift response and personal touch will encourage the customer to speak positively about your company on social media, which will generate more leads and even convert these customers into brand loyalists because of your stellar customer service.